Relieved in Europe

Today, as I sat in my apartment in Barcelona, something out the window caught my eye. I saw a little boy running away from his mother. The fact that this was happening on the sidewalk of the very busy street on which I live gave me cause for concern.

This boy, who couldn’t have been more than four-years old, appeared to be looking back at his mother as he ran almost daring her to come chase him. His mother appeared to be making gestures towards her son, but was making no apparent effort to retrieve him. The further the boy got away from his mother, the more worried I became that she was not giving chase. Finally, the boy stopped at the corner of a very busy intersection and made what I thought to be one last gesture of defiance to the woman who had brought him into this world. His mother calmly gestured back, but still made no attempt to save her child from imminent danger.

The child then walked over to a dumpster and pointed towards it in a manner that somehow suggested that he was now seeking his mother’s approval. The mother gave a simple nod of approval. With this nod, the four-year-old child lowered the front of his pants and began urinating on the dumpster. A dumpster on one of the busiest intersections in Barcelona.

When his business was satisfied, he returned to his now content mother. The obvious encouragement of such behavior by this youngster provided me a clue into what may be the driving force behind what I see as Europe’s greatest social defect, the propensity of their men to urinate in public.

When I was a child, my grandparents would pull off to the side of major highways to allow my siblings and me to take a nature break. This was only done along more remote areas of the highways, and we were always well protected from on-lookers by open car doors and the human shields provided by our grandparents. These roadside relief breaks stopped after I was about eight, and I certainly don’t remember any other incidents of public urination after that age. I think that makes me unique amongst the men that I rub shoulders with on a daily basis in Europe.

Continental Leaks

I say Europe rather than just Spain because I have witnessed this phenomenon in at least five European countries. My first experience with adult public urination in Euroland was, embarrassingly enough, my own. It happened while I was visiting a friend in Germany. At one point during the visit, we were driving through a remote area along the German autobahn. As we were driving, I let him know that I had a need to answer nature’s call at the soonest opportunity. I am sure that I had this same conversation hundreds of times on road trips in the U.S. A similar comment was usually followed by gauging the urgency of the situation and then speculation as to the distance of the next town or gas station.

I naively assumed the same conversation would take place here in the land of the super-refined Europeans. However, as I patiently waited for my friend to ask me how bad I needed to go, he almost shocked me into early release by immediately pulling the car off the road and pointing to a group of bushes that I could use as nature’s urinal. I wasn’t really sure how to react, so I muttered something very witty like, “ugh, ya sure?” He said that he was indeed sure, and that he and his friend may as well take advantage of the opportunity themselves. The next thing I knew, there we were, three grown men relieving our bladders as we watched cars zip past on the world’s most famous highway system. My friends handled this whole event in such a routine way that I didn’t want to say anything to let them know that I found their behavior to be inordinately strange to me. At that time, I didn’t make any associations with European “bathroom” habits on the whole; I just assumed that I had strange friends.

Shortly after my first adult public urination experience, I moved to Dublin, Ireland. Never before, and I hope never again, have I seen more public displays of urination than I witnessed in Ireland’s capitol city. The Irish have perfected the art of brewing beer (I’ll have words with any man who tells me Guinness isn’t the best stout beer brewed) and, to hear them tell it, beer consumption. It is obvious that the Irish have invested much time and energy into making and consuming beer. It is equally as obvious that they haven’t spent an equal amount of time considering the consequences of copious consumption.

No guidebook that I have read provided me what I think to be the most important lesson to be learned for anyone visiting Ireland; if you are walking the streets any time after 11 p.m. and you see a man facing the wall, be careful to avoid the stream coming from that wall. Any trip home from the pub in Dublin will guarantee a person a minimum of three “man facing the wall” sightings. If you plan to visit Dublin, please note that a person must also keep an open eye for these streams at all times. Just because you don’t see someone making a stream doesn’t mean that you didn’t just miss a stream being created.  On the rare evenings that it isn’t raining in the Emerald Isle, a person can find hundreds of yellow streams that, at first glance, almost appear to be miraculously originating from the walls of buildings.  If you are someone who really doesn’t enjoy a long night at the pubs, you don’t have to miss this wonderful tourist attraction. Keep an eye on the sidewalks during the daytime to see the stains left from the previous night’s activities.

Easily the most shocking Euro urination sight for me was on a highway only a few, short miles from the French Riviera (OK, I actually once saw far too much of a Madrid taxi driver who was relieving himself on the trees near the airport, but I prefer to suppress that memory). As an American, I have been trained to believe that we Americans are heathens in comparison to our refined European brethren. And everyone knows, at least everyone has been told by our French friends, that the French are the most refined of all. So, you can imagine my shock as I witnessed what seemed like an endless procession of French men disembarking from their German made SUVs and relieving themselves on the roadside with nary a bush to provide shelter. And all of this so close to the French Riviera, where I assumed only the most civilized of this most civilized race lived.

A Receptacle

The best solution that I have seen to this most vile of European habits is already in place in Amsterdam.  For those men who simply can’t wait for a more traditional location, the city of Amsterdam has provided outdoor urinals. I didn’t say Johnny-on-the-Spot covered bathrooms; I said urinals. These large, green, four station receptacles are placed smartly throughout the city to provide bladder relief to anyone willing to cozy up to a public urinal. This may seem rather strange to Americans, but is apparently not strange to our friends across the pond. For example, while traveling in Amsterdam with a group of Americans, one of my friends decided to stop, in broad daylight, and make use of a conveniently located outdoor urinal. The American girls we were with scampered away in shame at what was happening. I moved to a good spot to take a picture for our friends at home. The Dutch walking past didn’t even bat at an eye.  This was just average business being attended to on an average day.

The Irish, in their own special way, tried something similar in Dublin.  They put one, exactly one, big enclosed bathroom on a sidewalk in Dublin. For the equivalent of fifty cents, a person could use this restroom with all the privacy one could desire. I never once saw a person go into or out of that restroom, but I often saw men relieving themselves on the side of it. I couldn’t really blame them, 50 cents goes a long way toward a pint of Guinness.

So, the next time we Americans are made fun of because we are not as refined as our Euro neighbors, we can at least take comfort in the fact that we do our business where our business is intended to be done; in private.